Small Canon Search™

110. For the SEVENTH time the angel drew out a paper, from which he read as follows: "In the chamber under the light of our window, we compatriots have enlivened our thoughts and hence our judgment by meditation upon conjugial love. Who is there that would not be enlivened by that love? for when in the mind, it is at the same time in the whole body. We judge of the origin of the love from its delights. Who knows or ever has known a trace of any love except from its delight and pleasure? The delights of conjugial love are felt in their origins as blessedness, happiness, and felicity, in their derivations as amenities and pleasures, and in their ultimates as the delight of delights. Love of the sex, therefore, has its origin when the interiors of the mind and thence the interiors of the body are being opened up for the influx of these delights; but conjugial love has its origin when, by entry into betrothal, the primitive sphere of that love promotes them ideally. As regards the virtue or potency of that love, this comes from the ability of the love, with its current, to pass from the mind into the body; for when the mind sensates and acts, and especially when it is in delight from this love, then from its seat in the head it is present in the body. From this we judge the degrees of potency and the constancy of its alternations. Moreover, we also deduce the virtue of potency from the stock. If this be noble with the father, then by derivation it becomes noble with the offspring also. That such nobility is generated, inherited, and by derivation descends--as to this, reason agrees with experience." To this was subscribed the letter F.